''Monachoides vicinus'' (syn. ''Perforatella vicina'') is a

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

of air-breathing land snail, a

terrestrial Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth. Terrestrial may also refer to: * Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...

pulmonate gastropod

mollusk Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is e ...

in the family Hygromiidae, the hairy snails and their allies.

Distribution

This snail is found in the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

Slovakia Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the s ...

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

Balashov I. & Gural-Sverlova N. 2012. An annotated checklist of the terrestrial molluscs of Ukraine. ''Journal of Conchology''. 41 (1): 91-109. and other countries. There are isolated occurrences in the Pannonian Plain ( Bátorliget, Hungary) and in the Nordfrankischer Jura (Pottenstein).There are several published and unpublished distribution records and there is no evidence that the area of occupancy (AOO), extent of occurrence (EOO), or the number of locations are declining or extremely fluctuating.

Description

This is a silvicol species with a preference for deciduous and pine forests of higher altitude (over 700 m asl.),Grossu, A.V. 1983. Gastropoda Romaniae 4. Editura Litera, Bucuresti. where it lives on the ground among leaf-litter, or decaying dead wood. Monachoides vicinus dart lateral

These snails use

love dart A love dart (also known as a gypsobelum, shooting darts, or just as darts) is a sharp, calcareous or chitinous dart which some hermaphroditic land snails and slugs create. Love darts are both formed and stored internally in a dart sac. These ...

s as part of their mating behavior.

Conservation

This species is protected in

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

and some subpopulations are known to occur within protected areas. Although it inhabits a large area (300,000 km²), due to its special habitat preference, the population is fragmented. The species' range is not satisfactorily explored and there are no data on population trend. However, forest habitats are known to be diminishing in that region and therefore one might suppose that number of subpopulations or the number of mature individuals are declining.Feher, Z. 2013. Monachoides vicinus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2014.3. Retrieved 20 December 2014

References

External links

Hygromiidae Gastropods described in 1774 Taxa named by Otto Friedrich Müller {{Hygromiidae-stub